VV on AIDS in SA

[Patrick Bond]

Farmer is a fantastic scholar-activist, and has plenty of grassroots 
experiences in Haiti for grounding in the politics of public health. 
No one disputes that socio-economic factors aggravate (and in many 
cases cause) ill-health. But Farmer is clearly not denying the 
HIV-AIDS link, as are those who, like Thabo Mbeki, are apparently 
looking for some way to avoid paying a wee bit of money on AZT to 
save tens of thousands of lives...


> From:          bhandari at Princeton.EDU (Rakesh Bhandari)
> Has anyone yet read Paul Farmer's Infections and Inequalities: The Modern
> Plagues (UC Press, 1999). The chapter "Culture, Poverty and HIV
> Transmission: The Case of Rural Haiti" seems to speak to concerns voiced in
> this tread.
> 
> I note this paragraph, though I have not read the book: "The progression of
> HIV disease depends on host variables such as age, sex, nutritional status;
> viral load; CD4-cell number and function; and concurrent disease.
> Concurrent illness can alter this progression in at least three ways: first
> any serious illness, including opportunistic infections (most notably
> tuberculosis), may hasten the progression of HIV disease; second, various
> diseases can heighten an individual's 'net state of immunosuppression,'
> rendering him or her increasingly vulnerable to infection; and, third,
> certain infections seems to increase the risk of *acquiring* HIV..." p. 144
> Farmer directs the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at
> Harvard Medical School.
> 
> rb
> 
> 
>